Monday, February 7, 2011

February 7, 2011

Well this week was definitely strange and different for us. Tuesday we had a zone conference which basically lasted all day. I´m glad I got to see some friends and we heard talks from the President, his wife, the assisstants, and other little lectures and things. Obviously the best part was lunch. Then on Wednesday I had divisions with my district leader again! Only this time we were in my area and I had to plan the entire day and lead us! It was crazy being my first time leading. But everything worked out almost perfectly! I had no idea which bus we needed to take to get to which area but somehow when we got off we were on the exact street I wanted to get to! It was really inspiring to see such a successful day from what I tried to plan. Miracles really do happen after our faith and after we do all we can. Thursday we got a surprise visit from the traveling assistants. Basically in our mission there are four assistants to the president. Usually there´s two but when the rare occassion where both will finish their mission at the same time, they split them into two groups in order to train the next assistants. One group is the regular assistants that do all the duties of the assistants and the other group is called the traveling assistants. These two Elders travel throughout all the mission and join in the work of every area. Each day they travel sometimes minutes and sometimes hours by train to a new area and join the companionship there. Thursday happened to be our day! It´s always sudden and a surprise. Basically I would have to lead the area again because what happens is we don´t work as a group of four but split off into two groups of two. Myself and one of the assistants would take one part of our area and my companion with his assistant would take the other. The assistant who accompanioned me is from Chile and he is almost done with his mission. The assistants are generally the best of the mission because of their hard work and their experience. So I really got to see a completely different way of doing the work that day. We got a lot of work done but unfortunately a lot of the people I wanted to visit weren´t home. Well that´s the mission life. Today we played ping pong again. We had more of a tournament with the stakes being a type of dingdong pastry here called Alfojors. They´re like a small cake made with chocolate and sometimes with layers and fillings. Basically like a ding dong with cake batter. They´re really popular among the missionaries. We´re so sloppy with how the tournament was organized haha. We basically just played against each other and everyone just ate them together anyway. My ping pong skills began to resurface too haha! That´s about all that has been exciting this week. The next transfers are in less than a month and my companion will be leaving. Which means I´ll have to do a lot of the planning and clueing my new companion in on who is who and what we do here.
I´ve really learned a lot this week regarding the viewpoints of our country from those of south america. And I don´t only say this from the view points of Argentines. My companion is from Columbia and I talk a lot with Elders from Chile and Peru. First off, they´re super prideful for their countries. If I slip up and say something that doesn´t give the idea that Argentina is the best country in the world, it could be fatal. It really makes me think about relations with us and the rest of the world. For instance, theres a lot of english and united states influence here. They all know who Obama is and about our celebrities and movies and music artists and such things. But do we know who their President is? Do we have any knowledge regarding each of their countries like they do ours? I believe the majority of us don´t, which makes them all a bit resentful at us. But the truth is they really are a very loving people, I believe even moreso than us. My opinion is that we are pretty haughty and it´s true that most of us really don´t care about much outside our country. For instance we use a unit system that really makes no sense at all and the rest of the world uses the metric system. I didn´t know much about central or south america before the mission. To me, for the most part, latinos were basically all the same. I was definitely proved wrong and regret ever thinking that a thousand fold. If you say that here they will definitely be offended. I think that´s one of the reasons I´m here. To help show me the light about this people and relate it to the others about how the countries of the world view each other. It really is a mind churner. Despite how Argentines view ¨Yankees¨ (Americans from USA), or how we view latinos, I have nothing but the greatest love for my country and for the people of Argentina!
That´s about it for this week. Thanks for all your love and support in keeping up with my endeavours to help the people of Argentina! Take care everyone! I´m grateful for my friends from school who have recently sent me DearElders! They really made me happy! I mean you, Kaitlen and Aletta! Thanks for remembering me haha!
Elder Trevor Jones